Brutal Blueblood

  Brutal Blueblood

  Becker Gray

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  About Midnight Dynasty

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Tanith

  Summer before Senior Year—Ibiza

  I didn’t belong here.

  Below me, the Mediterranean stretched out to the horizon, a dark mirror reflecting the lights of the other yachts and party boats in the harbor. Behind me, Ibiza Town reared up in a rocky clutch of white buildings and twinkling lights. The pale tower of the town’s medieval cathedral pierced the velvety night while tourists crowded into confetti-strewn clubs nearby. Music pulsed into the air, punctuated with laughter and shouts, and the warm evening smelled like salt and spilled champagne.

  And I, Tanith Bradford, did not belong here.

  I turned and surveyed what I could see of Serafina van Doren’s yacht. Above me was the pool deck—crowded with lithe, inebriated bodies—and below me was the club deck, thrumming with music and flashing with lights.

  The deck I’d escaped to was a little quieter, a little tamer, but only barely. Couples and throuples were snuggled into giant chairs and canopied beds, giggling and kissing and more than kissing. Every few seconds, a wet, shrieking partygoer went streaking down the massive inflatable slide off the top of the yacht, catapulting into the warm water below and emerging with a victorious yell. These were people so rich and worldly that a summer in Ibiza was nothing to them. These were people so beautiful they were influencers by default.

  And here I was, the scholarship student, the plain girl, the poor girl from a nothing family.

  Nobody.

  Which was perfectly fine—I’d never needed to be somebody at Pembroke Prep, the elite boarding school I attended. I had plans for my real life, life after school, where I’d not only make my name as New York City’s resident literary tastemaker at Gotham Girl, but I’d help new writers, photographers, and illustrators make their names too. I’d be part of the literati, just as I’d dreamed of being since I had been a girl and learned what publishers and editors did for a living.

  I just had to survive one more year at Pembroke Prep. One more year of scraping every last possible networking opportunity and CV enhancer from Pembroke’s vaunted halls. One more year, and then I’d be on to Columbia University and the beginning of my career.

  And so, there was only one more year of being hopelessly, stupidly, perversely in love with Owen Montgomery.

  Maybe even less if I accepted the Everston Fellowship offer sitting in my inbox right now. It was a fantastic opportunity—maybe even a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—but it was so far away, on the West Coast, over two thousand miles away from the city I truly wanted to live in. And if I were being honest with myself, it felt strange to think about being so far away from my friends and family. Sussex County, New Jersey, wasn’t exactly a short drive to Pembroke Prep in Vermont, but at least it could still be driven. If I were in LA, my noisy but affectionate family would be out of reach for an entire semester.

  More importantly, I would miss my friends. And despite the elitist climate of Pembroke, I did have amazing friends.

  Serafina, queen of the school and whose family owned the yacht I was standing on; Aurora Lincoln-Ward, a literal princess; and Sloane Lauder, boot-wearing badass extraordinaire. They were why I let Sera convince me to come to Ibiza this summer . . . even though Sloane couldn’t come, and it would just be me reading in the shade while Sera and Aurora sunned themselves on her yacht. And partied. And pretended they weren’t flirting with the Hellfire boys here.

  Ah, the Hellfire Club. A not-so-secret club of the richest and cruelest boys at school. The absolute worst part about going to Pembroke Prep.

  Also, the prettiest part of Pembroke Prep.

  Especially Owen Montgomery.

  Stop. Don’t. You’re smarter than that.

  Which was exactly why I should say yes to the Everston offer. It would get me away from a certain Hellfire boy, juice up my CV, and, really, it was only a few months away from my friends and family. I could do anything for a few months, right?

  I looked into the bright pink cocktail I was holding and decided to take a sip, wincing as it went down. It was strong, too strong, but maybe that was what I was going to need if I were going to successfully make it through this trip without thinking about Owen Montgomery again. And his dark blue eyes, and his full, pouty mouth—a mouth like the statue of a Greek god might have. And his cheekbones, and his hair, which was like BBC period drama hair, and his hands, strong and elegant at the same time . . .

  I took another drink, a much bigger one this time, and when I lowered my glass, I saw someone standing at the far edge of the deck, their back against the railing and arms crossed over their chest.

  Dark eyes gleamed in the Mediterranean night. They were gleaming at me.

  I tried to catch my breath. I shouldn’t have been surprised; of course Owen was here along with the other Hellfire Club soon-to-be seniors: Keaton Constantine, Lennox Lincoln-Ward, Phineas Yates, and Rhys Huntington.

  But to see Owen right now, with the sultry breeze toying with his perfect hair, with the ancient hills of Ibiza behind him, with the mingled light of the moon and the raucous party reflected in his eyes—

  I realized I was staring and pivoted away, keeping my eyes fixed on the sea below, taking a performatively casual sip of my pink cocktail. I’d spent the last three years honing my theatrical skills around Owen Montgomery: pretending I didn’t notice him, pretending I didn’t hear his cultured, British accent icing up the hallways, pretending I didn’t smell the subtle notes of his Dior cologne whenever he sat in front of me in class.

  Citrus and spice, if you were curious.

  It was hard to pretend because not noticing him was impossible. But it was necessary to pretend, and I hated myself for noticing him, impossible or not.

  I was smart, ambitious—I had plans. And I’d read enough self-care Instagram captions to know having a crush on the wealthier-than-God asshole never ended well. No matter how sexy his sneer could be. No matter how tempting his cool aloofness was.

  I took another oh-so-casual drink.

  Maybe he was already gone.

  Maybe he’d gone back in to find his friends—or a beautiful girl. While Owen was less of a capital-F fuckboy than Phineas, I was still painfully aware that he rarely spent a night alone. And if the rumors were to be believed, all those cold, Mr. Darcy-like manners of his disappeared the moment the lights went off. (Or stayed on, according to certain legends about how he spent his study hours in the library.)

  And there were plenty of beautiful girls here tonight. The kind of girls who effortlessly flaunted bikinis more expensive than my entire wardrobe put together. The kind of girls who wore top-tier contacts and didn’t have to worry about their glasses misting if they stood too close to the pool.

  I adjusted said glasses now and decided to check and see if the coast was clear when I heard a low voice at my side.

  “Not dancing?”

  My stomach was nothing but flutters when
I slowly turned my head to see Owen Montgomery next to me, one dark eyebrow lifted into a perfect, cool arch. It was the kind of gesture that layered curiosity with disdain, observation with judgment. Owen wasn’t the kind of person to give away his regard—or even his interest—for nothing.

  It was one of the reasons I’d found him so fascinating these last few years. Nearly every other boy at Pembroke was an open book—utterly obvious, utterly transparent. But not Owen. While he was the most scrupulously dressed, even now on vacation, and possibly the best behaved of the Hellfire boys in the most technical sense of the word, he was a complete mystery.

  Unknowable and impossible to thaw.

  In fact, the only emotion I’ve ever seen from him was icy boredom. Which was exactly what I saw in his dark eyes as I turned to face him fully.

  “I danced earlier,” I said, trying to sound like I didn’t care he was here talking to me. That he’d sought me out after three years of having class together, of having social circles that often overlapped, when he’d never done so before now.

  What if all that time I thought he hadn’t noticed me, he had?

  What if he’s been wanting to talk to me . . . what if he’d merely been waiting for the right moment?

  No. No, I had to stop. I was better than going all flushed and giggly because a Hellfire boy had sought me out.

  I forced my voice into something unaffected and indifferent. “I notice you’re not dancing, either, even though I think there are a lot of girls who would be happy if you did.”

  The eyebrow stayed arched, and something pulled at the corner of his mouth. “So, you’ve been paying attention to what girls think of me, is that it?” His voice was still low, nearly intimate now, the kind of voice I had to lean in to hear over the music.

  “No,” I said, finishing the last of my cocktail. “I’d simply noticed there are more girls than boys dancing here tonight. It would be polite to help even out the ratio.”

  “I’m nothing if not polite,” he said dryly. “But I don’t enjoy dancing. Or . . .” He gestured to the club deck, where bodies writhed and rubbed and sweated. I could practically smell the spilled alcohol and body odor from here. “Whatever that is.”

  “No, you don’t seem like you would,” I murmured. Unlike the other boys who were wearing swim trunks and glow-in-the-dark necklaces, Owen was dressed in boat shoes, cuffed trousers, and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to expose his forearms.

  He looked chic, sharp, grown. Like someone who’d already graduated from high school games and was ready for other, bigger ones. Ones much colder and darker.

  “I haven’t seen you around the van Doren yacht,” he said. His gaze raked me over from head to toe, no doubt cataloging my lack of yacht wear. I was in a T-shirt that said, “Bury Me Next to My TBR,” a pair of cutoffs, and tennis shoes that were still dusty from my earlier tour of the cathedral and nearby Punic necropolis. My ash-blond hair was in a braid that had started tidily enough but was now all messy and windswept from a day of sightseeing. I had no makeup on, and without my usual ensemble of serious black clothing, I felt like my glasses looked, well, nerdy. And not in the cool, NYC, arty way like they usually did.

  I adjusted them self-consciously, my cheeks burning as I mentally compared myself to all the Instagram-ready girls on the yacht. But when I glanced back up to Owen’s face, I saw something that surprised me.

  Heat.

  He was looking at me like I’d personally lit him on fire.

  “I’ve been around,” I managed to answer. It was the truth—I could only afford to come to Ibiza because Sera’s family owned both the plane that brought us here and the yacht we were staying on.

  “No, I don’t think you have,” he said softly. “I would have remembered.”

  I couldn’t breathe for the way he looked at me then. Like I was the only person he’d ever seen in his life. Like I was the only thing that had ever stirred his interest.

  “I was in the town today,” I said, mesmerized by that look. God, to see him looking at me like that now when I’d spent so long hiding how I felt . . .

  The eyebrow drew up again. “In the town? During the day?”

  Most visitors our age only hit the town after sundown and spent their days sleeping off the mistakes of the nights before.

  “I wanted to see the architecture and the history,” I explained. “Did you know that the goddess of Ibiza is named Tanit? And that’s the origin of my name? I had no idea Tanith came from the name of an ancient Carthaginian deity.”

  “I don’t know,” he said, his lower lip tucked behind his teeth for the barest instant before he released it. “I could believe you take after a goddess.”

  I laughed, but I was blushing too. “Stop. Tanit wasn’t even that kind of goddess. She liked human sacrifice.”

  “Well, I can think of a few humans on this yacht that might be sacrifice material,” he said, flicking his eyes over to a group of people currently whooping and screeching on their way up to the rooftop pool. “But perhaps I should start with something smaller. How about another drink?”

  Another pink drink did sound good, but I was already breaking enough rules tonight. While I didn’t normally participate in the “we’re too rich to have consequences” parties at Pembroke—since I wasn’t actually too rich to have consequences—something about being on a yacht in Europe made me feel like I wasn’t in the real world at all. Like I could taste just for a night what my classmates tasted so carelessly all the time.

  But there were some of my own rules I’d never break.

  “I don’t accept drinks I haven’t watched being made,” I said, a little apologetically. “But I appreciate the offer.”

  I expected this to ruffle him—another eyebrow lift, at least. But instead, I got an amused pull at the corner of his mouth.

  “That’s probably for the best, especially here,” he said, his gaze going back to the clump of screeching people. “What if I brought you something sealed? Would that be an acceptable offering for a goddess?”

  I blushed again. Goddammit, I needed to be stronger than this. But still I said, “Maybe.”

  With another pull of his mouth, he disappeared into the fray, and within only a few minutes, returned with an entire tray of things, including a glass, a second glass full of ice, and two full-sized bottles of liquor, both unopened.

  “I meant, like, a beer or something,” I said, watching as he commandeered a nearby table and set the tray down. “I don’t need an entire bottle of gin.”

  “Nobody does, except maybe Winston Churchill,” Owen said crisply. “I’m making you a fresh cocktail.”

  With efficient, graceful movements, he had the apple brandy and gin measured out, along with a splash of grenadine, and was shaking the mixture with ice. Even for Pembroke Prep—a school of playboys and princesses and parties famous for their indulgence—this was a level of sophistication I’d never seen before. Certainly not from another eighteen-year-old.

  The surprise on my face earned me a wry look. “If I’m going to make an offering to a goddess, I’m going to do it right,” he murmured.

  And then he poured the bright pink cocktail into the clean glass with impossible neatness—no flourishes, no showing off. Simply the expertise of a gentleman used to making real drinks.

  He held the glass out to me. “Here. A Pink Lady. Minus the egg whites—they didn’t have them at the bar.” A subtle hint of disapproval curved his lips. Clearly, a well-stocked bar for an Ibiza boat party and a well-stocked bar for Owen Montgomery were two different things.

  After accepting the glass, I took a sip, hesitantly at first, and then another one as the deliciously dry flavor revealed itself. “This is really good. Better than the first drink, even.”

  He nodded, his eyes on my mouth as he watched me drink. “It’s an old Prohibition cocktail. Not too sweet, not too cloying.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and meant it. “I don’t think anyone’s ever gone out of their way to mak
e something like this for me before.”

  “Ever?” Owen asked, genuine surprise coloring his tone. “In your life? What about your family?”

  “I have a big family,” I explained. “Four sisters, and my mother takes up as much emotional energy as four more sisters. It’s very crowded. At home, I mean. So, there’s not a lot of special treatment going around. It’s more like survival of the fittest.”

  He seemed to absorb that, his brows pulling together. After a minute, he said quietly, “I don’t get much special treatment either.”

  Being so much quieter and more restrained than the other Hellfire boys, I didn’t know a lot about his family life or background the same way I knew about Lennox’s or Keaton’s, but I did know he came from money and comfort, and so it would be easy to dismiss his despondency. So easy to say, “Aw, poor little rich boy,” and write his words off as a symptom of affluenza or whatever it was called. But there was something about the way he’d said it—low and clipped—that belied a much deeper feeling than the words themselves indicated. And when I searched his face, I caught a glimpse of something fleeting under all that cool control. A glimpse of something beyond the famous Ice King.

  “I’m sorry,” I replied, meaning it.

  He shook his head. “It’s fine; it’s fine. I don’t know why I said that, actually.”

  And he did seem a little confused, like he truly didn’t know why he said it. Like he wasn’t used to sharing anything about himself at all.

  He changed the subject then. “Is this your first summer in Ibiza?”

  I took another sip, licking my lips after. His eyes followed the movement, darkening as my tongue traced over my lower lip. A flicker of heat curled somewhere low in my belly.

  “What gave it away?” I asked, trying not to betray how much my body responded to his presence. “The sightseeing? The T-shirt and jean shorts?”

  He reached out slowly, like he was giving me time to back away or tell him no. I did neither, and then he carefully brushed a knuckle over the curve of my cheek. “You’re a little burnt,” he said. Burnt, not burned—that inflection of a British accent again. “It makes me think you didn’t realize how sunny it would be here.”